Click the image above to see a screener of vulture, buzzard, and condor stock video footage. Clips can be viewed in their entirety and purchased at HDNatureFootage.net or viewed here in Quicktime format.

Filming Vultures, Buzzards, and Condor Stock Video Footage

Not surprisingly, the best way to film these scavengers is at a kill, i.e., carrion. However, vultures, buzzards, and condors can be cautious coming to a kill so a blind is a must (another option is to place a motion-activated camcorder unit at the kill site). One nice thing about vultures, buzzards, and condors (depending on your point of view), is that you generally don't have to get up early to film the birds, as they spend the first hour or so after sunrise soaking up the suns rays and waiting for the updrafts to begin.

The turkey and black vulture, also known as buzzards, are common to much of North America with turkey vultures more common in the north and black vultures more common in the south. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the California condor, one of the world's most endangered animals. In fact they were once absence from the wild, but thanks to a captive propogation program animals have been released in California, Arizona, and other parts of the Desert Southwest. But their populations are still imperilled. Lack of habitat and poisoning still affect the birds. Lead poisoning due to hunter's bullets in abandoned carcasses is a problem not only to condor's, but many other scavengers.